Be the Hope

I'm not good enough or skilled enough to do any advanced data interpretation on who reads these blog posts. I don't know if readers are young people, older people, middle-aged people, or people who will thank me to just mind my own business when it comes to talking about age. All of that out of the way, this particular post is geared toward those of us who have made a lot of trips around the sun.

In our church staff meeting a couple of weeks ago, a discussion broke out about young people. I'm talking about young people who are in middle school or high school, but also those who are in their 20's. Our church youth director said something like this: "What I notice is that so many students and young people just don't have any hope. There's a lot of despair. They honestly think that Russia is going to nuke us any day now, that the planet may not be here when they're adults, and that they're never going to be able to afford a life on their own." He asked us as a staff to think about how we can show the young people some hope. So I did think about it.

Thankfully, no one on the church staff simply said, "Well, their hope is in Jesus." This may be true at some level, but at the practical day-to-day level, it's a hollow statement that is usually designed to shut down the conversation and avoid thinking about a difficult topic. I mean, once you bring Jesus into it, what can humans do? I'm a church guy and I hate those type of bumper-sticker answers. They stifle serious thinking about very real problems.

So where can the young people of today see hope? My answer may seem a little egotistical but it's really not: they can look at us. As soon as the youth director said that young people are afraid of Russia nuking us, I said, "Well, sure. But that's nothing new. We've been afraid that Russia would nuke us since the '50's." Remember under-the-desk drills? I personally don't, but I remember fallout shelter signs, the tension of the Reagan years, and the thought that anything we did as a country could provoke an attack. Yet we're still here. I've heard doomsayers predict the end of Earth and the end of humanity many different times. Yet we're still here. It's incredibly hard for young people to get ahead financially, but most of us older people remember eating a lot of ramen noodles, going to bars on free food night, and selling what we could just to pay rent. And we're still here.

I'm not dismissing or diminishing the concerns of young people at all. They have good reasons to be worried and anxious. What I'm suggesting is that those of us who have lived through similar situations, even if culture was very different, can be the hope that they're looking for. It's going to require listening to them without rolling our eyes, casting judgement, and using a lot of "back in my day" bloviating (I've always wanted to use that word). Then I think we can truthfully say, "I know. I truly understand. But you're strong. You're smart. You have opportunities and possibilities that we never had. We made it, and you can too." Then we have to do what we can to help them knock down whatever barriers they face in attaining a hopeful future.

Things are different, certainly. But things are also the same. And we're still here. Let's show the younger set that there is hope. We're the hope.

Mike